People & Places

Best Judge New York 2009 - Jed Rakoff

In one 12-page memorandum order, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff basically summed up the Wall Street meltdown and spoke for us commoners by blasting the government and the banks. Taking the unusual step of rejecting a settlement scheme cooked up by the SEC and Bank of America, the Manhattan judge tore BofA executives new assholes for lying to their shareholders, and ripped the SEC for signing off on the deal and for trying to make the victims (BofA's shareholders) pay the fine. The beautifully crafted, fair-minded document is filled with "makes no sense" and "absurd" and other colorful language—too bad it's not a template for how to deal with the rest of the aftermath of Wall Street's collapse.